"I'm not the same Ares as the one you knew," he said, frustration showing through in his tone. He didn't know how he was like before or whether he could go back and pretend nothing happened or if the version of him before was who he was really supposed to be and now he was doing everything wrong.
He didn't know, he just didn't know, and he wouldn't know no matter how many times those kinds of questions were asked.
"You don't seem to like me anyway," he added quietly, his gaze never moving from the inanimate objects to the man standing there talking to him. He saw that look - that face, the contempt, the disgust, the repulsion - and he'd know that look until the end of time. It cut deep into an old wound and wiggled until there were new tears in the healed gash, and he didn't know how to make it all stop; he just fenced himself in, sat there and watched it bleed him dry.
You didn't need to live past a thousand years old to have a wound like that. No one talked about it, but everyone had one.